[nimbius]

If youve never experienced costco or been a member, this is difficult to understand but there is an undercurrent, nay, a prevailing sentiment of savings value and above all else things like rebate and cash back. Costco has established transparency for the consumer so pocketing the money is an egregious offense for most customers.

- credit cards offered by costco offer generous cashback

- most costco food items include discount pricing thats predictable and visible in the price itself. the decimal value of the price can even determine if the item is being phased out.

- even costco memberships are broken down into savings and the staff will gladly quantify your expenditures and potential cash back should you change or upgrade a membership. unused membership portions are even refunded.

- the refunds. no questions asked, for virtually anything, any time. this is where the costco member expects tariffs to be refunded as well.

[ceejayoz]

I fully expect these to get refunded back to customers.

I occasionally get a gift card in the mail for a product I already purchased from Costco because they negotiated a better price for the batch after the fact.

It looks like this: https://content-images.thekrazycouponlady.com/nie44ndm9bqr/3...

[RaftPeople]

> a prevailing sentiment of savings value and above all else things like rebate and cash back.

I did some consulting work there a long time ago building some software to manage inventory in one of their departments.

When we asked about their goals, like improve margins, they said "absolutely not, we will not increase beyond 14%". When we asked why, they said "the minute our customers think we are increasing margins, we will lose members, and membership is the goal."

[cyode]

What do you mean by “the decimal value of the price can even determine if the item is being phased out” ?

[ewoodrich]

Costco uses a convention for their retail (doesn’t work for by-weight) products where e.g .97 typically means it’s a limited run or to be discontinued.

There are others as well, they have more precise meaning for their internal procurement processes but that’s the customer facing rule of thumb.